1 Introduction

Inspired by Tyler McIntosh’s article The Camping Crunch: Camping’s rise in popularity on America’s public lands1, I decided to use the same data set from recreation.gov2 to look at camping dynamics in North Carolina, where I live.

I wondered, in North Carolina …


1.1 What’s possible given these data set?

First one must check: what’s in the data, and are there any important limitations? I found five:

  1. recreation.gov mostly processes reservations for federal facilities. It does not process reservations for state-owned public campgrounds in North Carolina. NC State Parks use ReserveAmerica.com instead, thus the campgrounds closest to my home in the Jordan Lake State Recreation Area and my favorite at Mount Mitchell are not included in this data set. As noted at https://www.ncparks.gov/find-a-park :

    There are 41 places that are currently part of the North Carolina State Parks system: 34 parks, four recreation areas, and three staffed state natural areas.

  2. Some campsites are not reservable, and some may not be reservable in the off season. So by definition, use of these sites will not show up in this data set.

  3. Some campsites have become reservable during the years covered in this data set. For example, the NPS campgrounds at Cape Hatteras: Oregon Inlet and Frisco started taking reservations in 2015, and Cape Point started in 2016. Including these campgrounds unduly inflates the mulit-year growth rate.

  4. As is visible in the per-campground trend data starting with camping person-nights by park, there are a lot of outliers in the data in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Thus I have varied the end year as I saw fit to communicate trends most clearly. Likely there are two causes to these anomalies:

    • Data for 2018 and first half of 2019 are less reliable than other years as explained in the 2018 history readme:

      Due to the transition between Rec.gov vendors the FY 2018 historical reservation data has not been fully verified for accuracy and completeness.

    • In 2020 due the the COVID-19 pandemic, people changed their behavior significantly, and camping facilities were closed for some periods of the year. For example, I assume that group campsites were used less frequently, and group size was smaller than earlier years.

  5. As noted at trailandsummit.com the definition of “standard”, “tent” and “RV” overlap, which means counts and trends below that distinguish among these categories would not reflect the experience of campers, for example, in the availability of a campsite for them:

    In most campgrounds, the term “standard campsite” is interchangeable with a “basic campsite.” Like basic sites, standard campsites usually have a driveway, a picnic table, and a fire ring or grill, and are normally reserved for groups of 6 people or less. Depending on the type of campground, standard sites may be suitable for tents or RVs, though they’re mostly used by tent campers. This is because most standard sites have driveways that are only suitable for smaller campers and campervans. That being said, in RV-only campgrounds, standard campsites may refer to a site where you get everything listed above, plus a simple electric hookup, but no water or sewer.

Given there are no RV-only campgrounds among these federally-owned facilities in NC, I am recognizing all “standard” sites as “tent” sites.


1.2 Focusing on federally-owned facilities in NC

So setting aside the NC State Park system, I focus here on federal facilities in NC, which amidst the oddities of 2020 provided 785,845 person-nights of camping and collected $3,369,447 in overnight camping fees.

For the sake of brevity, I refer to the facilities as campgrounds with campsites even though some are cabins, lodges, lookouts, and shelters.

There are 46 federal facilities in North Carolina offering reservations through recreation.gov, which I consolidated from 56 separate facility_id values (some parks record cabins or group campgrounds with separate facility ids).

A summary table can be found in Appendix 1 NC facility summary


2 Federal agencies, camping facilities and campsites

The following federal agencies offer overnight camping with reservations via recreation.gov:


Federal agencies offering overnight camping reservations in NC
via recreation.gov
org_name n_facilities org_abb org_url
USDA Forest Service 31 FS http://www.fs.fed.us
National Park Service 22 NPS http://www.nps.gov
US Army Corps of Engineers 3 USACE http://www.usace.army.mil



2.1 Park locations

Parks are nearly all in the mountains in the West or at coast in the East.


2.2 Number of campsites

About half the campgrounds have at least 50 campsites:


3 Person-nights

These facilities provided nearly 7 million person-nights of camping 2009-2020.

Some notes:


3.3 Are the increases occurring during a particular time of the year?

Defining the summer season to be the four months May 15 to Sep 15, one can see that most camps are busiest during the summer. And while the number of camping person-nights has increased year-round, for most campgrounds, more of the growth has been during the summer:


Part 1:

NC seasonal camping person-nights per year by campground (part 1)


Part 2:

NC seasonal camping person-nights per year by campground (part 2)


4 Occupancy

4.1 What is the occupancy rate at NC campgrounds, and when are they fullest?

Since I don’t have a declared number of sites per facility+site_type that is reliable, I define percent occupancy as the percent of the maximum recorded occupancy for the campground + site type, where “maximum recorded” is over the years of interest.

Percent occupancy is defined as follows, for all facilities offering reservations at the time:

  • Daily: mean percent of occupancy for that day that year, or for that day averaged over multiple years

  • Weekly: weighted mean percent of occupancy for that week

  • Yearly: mean occupancy rate for all days of the year


Limitations

  • I am looking at 2009-2017, since the data in 2018 and 2019 are unreliable, and usage patterns earlier and in 2020 were not typical. In some plots I further subset the data in the interest of readability.

  • Is 100% occupancy rate the same as max occupancy? I cannot determine that from the data. Can one assume that each campground + site type reached 100% occupancy at least once? If so, then yes, max occupancy would mean 100% occupancy.

  • This method may under-estimate occupancy rates in earlier years if facilities added additional inventory of an existing site_type. I am unwilling to assume that every facility+site_type reached maximum occupancy every year, so I cannot calculate a yearly max. Since I am using all facilities (not limited to ones offering reservations in 2009), if a facility added additional inventory of an existing site_type, prior years will under-report occupancy rate.

  • Some sites have a mix of reservable and non-reservable sites. When campers show up and take a campsite, does it show up in the reservations.gov as a reservation on the start_date? Are there campsite still using the honor system, where campers deposit payment during their stay and a park staff person picks it up later. If so, are these entered into the reservation system and do they show up in this data set?


The difference in occupancy rates off-season and during the summer are not as different as I expected. This may be due to the climate in NC: the most pleasant times to camp are in the spring and fall. Scouting and other community groups are most likely to camp in the off-season (while school is in session).


What if one considers only Friday and Saturday nights, the most popular nights for camping?


4.3 Max occupancy

How many days have campground + site type experienced max occupancy? Frankly, not as many as I expected. Here are two views of the same information. A list of the campsites are in Appendix 1 Days with occupancy at 100 and 90 percent



What about days >= 90% occupancy instead of 100%? Still not as many as I expected.



5 Reservations

5.1 How far ahead do people reserve?

As one might expect, sites in limited supply are booked earlier: more than a third of group sites and more than a quarter of of cabins are booked six months before the start date. In contrast: consistently, only a third of tent sites are reserved 30 days in advance.

It looks like in the early years one could reserve most cabins with 6 months lead time. Then for 2012 and later years the cabin policy changed to 12 months lead time.

Tent, rv, and equestrian sites can be reserved six months in advance.

The data for 2018 and 2019 seem to have some errors, which are visible in the upper right of each plot: why are there order dates after start_date? These are the only two years in which this pattern is visible in the plots.

I note again here that some parks have sites that are first-come, first-serve (i.e., they are not reservable). By definition those sites do not show up here.


There has been a general trend towards reserving earlier:


The plots above mask differences in campgrounds. As you would expect some parks are more popular then others, with a greater portion of the reservations occurring earlier. Over the years, most properties are seeing earlier reservations. Swan Cabin is experiencing the opposite trend.

The most popular group campgrounds seem to be Cove Creek Upper and Lower Group Camp, and Kuykendall Group Camp. Other group campsites are included with other site types, so if they have the same dynamic, it’s not visible in these plots.

Cabins and Group Camps are the most likely to show a linear-like increase in reservations over time (after the early birds reserve as soon as reservations open).



Davidson River and Big Creek have about 50% of tent sites booked 60 days before start date. Most don’t achieve that until 30 days or fewer before start date. It’s interesting that 6 of the 32 campgrounds started offering reservations through recreation.gov in recent years. I assume in prior years these sites were not reservable.


Cove Creek and Kuykendall group camps seem most popular, with nearly half the group reservations made a year in advance–as soon as the reservations opened. Next most popular are by Cataloochee and White Pines. Briar Bottom and North Mills River have seen remarkable increases in early reservations in recent years.


Wash Creek looks like the only equestrian camp to allow bookings a year in advance. Among the rest, Cataloochee has the most consistent reservation pattern over the years.


With RV sites, Lake Powhatan and Smokemont have the biggest early surge when reservations open six months in advance.

While Powhatan has been 75% booked 30 days in advance, Linville Falls has been less than 50% booked 15-20 days ahead.


For the camps that allow cabin reservations a year in advance, Balsam Lake books faster than Great Island or Long Point. Of those that take bookings six months in advance, Swan books faster than Cheoah Point.


6 Cost per person-night

6.1 What does it cost per person, and how has that changed?

Median cabin cost per person doubled in 2012, and equestrian per-person cost grew 2013- 2017. Otherwise median prices were generally stable. Note that these costs are not inflation-adjusted.

Per-person costs at group and equestrian sites in 2020 seem like an aberration: either the more expensive sites were not used much, group sizes were a lot larger (seems unlikely during the pandemic), or there was some other change in usage pattern. Or there could be a problem with the data.


7 Summary

Truly there are more people camping more nights at NC public facilities. The clearest increase can be seen in Are there trends by day of the week? in the plot NC camping each night of the week (person-nights): each year, each day of the week, in the summer and off-season, there were more people camping (until the pandemic derailed the trend in 2020).

I wonder whether growth at the NC state parks was similar over this time period. My hunch is that the NC parks are more often at max occupancy, so the growth rate may be capped. If the same data were available from ReserveAmerica.com perhaps I would do a similar analysis. Supposedly there is an API at https://developer.active.com/docs/read/Campground_APIs, however the comments suggest it is no longer available. The North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation is part of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Do make the data available? I couldn’t find it in any of the NC government-sponsored open data portals. Would they make the data available if I ask?


8 Appendix 1: North Carolina

8.1 NC facility summary

There are 46 federal facilities in North Carolina offering reservations through recreation.gov, which I consolidated from 56 separate facility_id values (some parks record cabins or group campgrounds as separate facilities).


Site types offered by federal camping facilities in NC
facility_id_group facility_name facility_id_list Site type n_sites
tent cabin group equestrian rv management
1 Arrowhead Campground 233910 92 92
2 Badin Lake Group Camp + Badin Lake Campground 233912, 233911 65 6 71
3 Balsam Lake Lodge + Balsam Mountain Campground 233975, 273848 84 2 86
4 Bandits Roost 233421 204 2 206
5 Big Creek Horse Camp + Big Creek Group Camp + Big Creek Campground 232484, 232437, 273821 12 2 14 28
6 Black Mountain Campground 273780 34 34
7 Briar Bottom Group Campground 233947 12 12
8 Canebrake Horse Camp 233913 54 54
9 Cape Point Campground 251945 190 190
10 Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area 233954 22 22
11 Cataloochee Group Camp + Cataloochee Horse Camp + Cataloochee Campground 232434, 232482, 233284 54 6 15 75
12 Cedar Point Campground 233312 70 1 71
13 Cheoah Point Cabin 1 + Cheoah Point Cabin 2 + Cheoah Point Campground 234584, 234585, 234583 13 4 17
14 Cove Creek Lower Group Camp + Cove Creek Upper Group Camp 233108, 231992 4 4
15 Curtis Creek Campground 251469 37 37
16 Davidson River 231993 240 1 241
17 Deep Creek Group Camp 232478 6 6
18 Doughton Park Campground 233369 41 3 23 67
19 Flanners Beach Campground 234718 66 66
20 Fort Hamby Park 234253 64 2 66
21 Frisco Campground 251430 103 19 122
22 Great Island Cabin Camp 233332 48 2 50
23 Harmon Den Horse Campground 234424 20 20
24 Jackrabbit Mountain 234180 155 52 207
25 Julian Price Campground 234037 110 58 168
26 Kuykendall Group Camp 231994 2 2
27 Lake Powhatan 231995 110 35 14 159
28 Linville Falls Campground 234036 55 4 27 86
29 Long Point Cabin Camp 233333 40 40
30 Mount Pisgah Campground 234182 60 54 114
31 North Mills River 232380 24 2 26
32 Ocracoke Campground 232504 139 4 143
33 Oregon Inlet Campground 251431 119 3 5 1 128
34 Oyster Point Campground 262810 29 29
35 Rattler Ford Group Campground 234370 8 8
36 Rocky Bluff Campground 264886 17 17
37 Round Bottom Horse Camp 232483 11 11
38 Smokemont Campground + Smokemont Group Camp 232486, 232441 210 6 107 323
39 Standing Indian Campground 234228 66 6 72
40 Swan Cabin 234313 2 2
41 Tow String Horse Camp 232481 7 7
42 Van Hook Glade 232399 18 18
43 Warrior Creek 233665 138 5 143
44 Wash Creek Horse Camp 234743 2 2
45 White Pine South Group Camp 233109 2 2
46 Wolf Ford Horse Camp 10011396 11 11
Total inventory - - 2,641 96 81 134 380 23 3,355



8.1.1 Campgrounds average yearly person_nights

The following table is ordered by average yearly person_nights, which provides one measure of popularity. n_years is the number of years reservation.gov has managed reservations for the campground.


Facilities in NC offering overnight camping reservations
And person-nights of camping 2009-2020
via recreation.gov
facility_id_group facility_name n_sites person_nights1 avg_yearly_person_nights2 n_years
16 Davidson River 241 709,053 59,088 12
38 Smokemont Campground + Smokemont Group Camp 323 662,266 55,189 12
4 Bandits Roost 206 637,752 53,146 12
33 Oregon Inlet Campground 128 205,724 34,287 6
22 Great Island Cabin Camp 50 229,138 25,460 9
32 Ocracoke Campground 143 304,024 25,335 12
11 Cataloochee Group Camp + Cataloochee Horse Camp + Cataloochee Campground 75 296,641 24,720 12
27 Lake Powhatan 165 296,485 24,707 12
2 Badin Lake Group Camp + Badin Lake Campground 71 290,117 24,176 12
14 Cove Creek Lower Group Camp + Cove Creek Upper Group Camp 8 273,900 22,825 12
43 Warrior Creek 143 266,570 22,214 12
24 Jackrabbit Mountain 207 257,140 21,428 12
39 Standing Indian Campground 72 228,452 19,038 12
7 Briar Bottom Group Campground 12 217,519 18,127 12
29 Long Point Cabin Camp 40 144,762 18,095 8
1 Arrowhead Campground 92 192,817 16,068 12
12 Cedar Point Campground 71 158,801 15,880 10
21 Frisco Campground 122 94,835 15,806 6
25 Julian Price Campground 181 181,407 15,117 12
30 Mount Pisgah Campground 114 158,812 13,234 12
20 Fort Hamby Park 71 143,977 11,998 12
6 Black Mountain Campground 34 30,284 10,095 3
26 Kuykendall Group Camp 2 99,244 8,270 12
8 Canebrake Horse Camp 54 88,208 7,351 12
17 Deep Creek Group Camp 6 88,193 7,349 12
9 Cape Point Campground 190 35,470 7,094 5
10 Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area 22 19,493 6,498 3
31 North Mills River 26 76,916 6,410 12
28 Linville Falls Campground 86 76,675 6,390 12
35 Rattler Ford Group Campground 8 73,324 6,110 12
19 Flanners Beach Campground 66 52,934 5,882 9
5 Big Creek Horse Camp + Big Creek Group Camp + Big Creek Campground 28 65,112 5,426 12
3 Balsam Lake Lodge + Balsam Mountain Campground 86 60,948 5,079 12
13 Cheoah Point Cabin 1 + Cheoah Point Cabin 2 + Cheoah Point Campground 21 60,000 5,000 12
15 Curtis Creek Campground 37 24,401 4,067 6
42 Van Hook Glade 18 39,979 3,332 12
45 White Pine South Group Camp 2 36,891 3,074 12
44 Wash Creek Horse Camp 2 15,504 1,938 8
18 Doughton Park Campground 67 16,932 1,881 9
34 Oyster Point Campground 29 7,201 1,800 4
40 Swan Cabin 2 18,826 1,569 12
36 Rocky Bluff Campground 17 1,263 1,263 1
23 Harmon Den Horse Campground 20 12,087 1,007 12
37 Round Bottom Horse Camp 11 4,850 404 12
46 Wolf Ford Horse Camp 11 690 345 2
41 Tow String Horse Camp 7 1,070 89 12
Total — 3,387 6,956,687 — —

1 Sum of all person-nights of reserved camping with start date in 2009 through 2020 via recreation.gov

2 Since the number of person-nights has been increasing year-over-year, for campgrounds that have become more popular, the average under-respresents recent activity at campgrounds with the most years of data



8.1.2 Reservable sites added during the years of interest

As noted in the table above and the individual facility plots in Camping person-nights by park and subsequent plots, some campgrounds did not offer reservable sites during all the years of interest. In most of these cases, non-reservable sites were converted to ones taking reservations during the years of interest.

The following campgrounds did not offer any reservable sites in 2009 :

facility_id facility_name site_type first_year
273780 Black Mountain Campground tent 2018
251945 Cape Point Campground tent 2016
233954 Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area tent 2018
233312 Cedar Point Campground tent 2011
251469 Curtis Creek Campground tent 2015
233369 Doughton Park Campground group 2019
233369 Doughton Park Campground rv 2012
233369 Doughton Park Campground tent 2012
234718 Flanners Beach Campground tent 2012
251430 Frisco Campground rv 2020
251430 Frisco Campground tent 2015
233332 Great Island Cabin Camp cabin 2012
233333 Long Point Cabin Camp cabin 2012
251431 Oregon Inlet Campground group 2015
251431 Oregon Inlet Campground rv 2015
251431 Oregon Inlet Campground tent 2015
262810 Oyster Point Campground tent 2017
264886 Rocky Bluff Campground tent 2020
234743 Wash Creek Horse Camp equestrian 2013
10011396 Wolf Ford Horse Camp equestrian 2019



The following campgrounds had at least one site_type reservable in 2009 and added the site_type in the year noted below:


facility_id facility_name site_type first_year
273848 Balsam Mountain Campground tent 2018
273821 Big Creek Campground tent 2018
233284 Cataloochee Campground tent 2011
234036 Linville Falls Campground group 2016
232380 North Mills River group 2014



8.2 There is some reuse of product_id values (unfortunately)

This complicates matters. Since the difference is at most 228 (7%), I generally work with counts calculated using “group_by(facility_id, site_type)” and ignore the differences otherwise.


Counting sites in nc_history
product_id is not unique in all cases
counting_method n_sites delta comment
summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) 3,269 — Baseline: simple count of distinct product_id values in data set
group_by(facility_id) %>% summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) %>% ungroup() %>% pull(n) %>% sum() 3,294 25 Additional cases in which multiple facilities use the sampe product_id values
group_by(facility_id, site_type) %>% summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) %>% ungroup() %>% pull(n) %>% sum() 3,379 85 Additional cases in which multiple facilities use the same product_id values across multiple site_type categories
group_by(facility_id, site_type_original) %>% summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) %>% ngroup() %>% pull(n) %>% sum() 3,497 118 Additional cases in which multiple facilities use the same product_id values across more detailed, multiple, original site_type categories
Total — 228 —



8.3 NC Inventory added to recreation.gov

It seems recreation.gov included existing reservable NC inventory by the end of 2008. So I start with 2009 in most cases. Note that some existing campsites were added later when they became reservable, for example the NPS campgrounds at Cape Hatteras: Oregon Inlet and Frisco started taking reservations in 2015, and Cape Point started in 2016 (at the end of 2021 Camp Point was taking same-day reservations only according to https://www.nps.gov/caha/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm).


8.4 Days with occupancy at 100 and 90 percent

Number of days facilities were at max occupancy
2013-2020 by site type
facility_name site_type season n_days n_days_all_site_types1
Bandits Roost group summer 17 19
Linville Falls Campground group summer 10 17
Linville Falls Campground group off-season 5 17
Fort Hamby Park group summer 8 9
Badin Lake Group Camp group off-season 5 5
Balsam Lake Lodge cabin summer 5 5
Big Creek Group Camp group summer 5 5
Wash Creek Horse Camp equestrian summer 5 5
Doughton Park Campground group off-season 3 5
Cove Creek Lower Group Camp group summer 4 4
Kuykendall Group Camp group summer 4 4
Cheoah Point Campground tent summer 3 4
Oregon Inlet Campground rv summer 2 4
Briar Bottom Group Campground group summer 3 3
Cove Creek Upper Group Camp group summer 3 3
Flanners Beach Campground tent summer 3 3
Smokemont Group Camp group summer 3 3
Lake Powhatan rv summer 2 3
North Mills River group summer 2 3
Standing Indian Campground group off-season 2 3
Deep Creek Group Camp group summer 2 2
Long Point Cabin Camp cabin off-season 2 2
Rattler Ford Group Campground group summer 2 2
White Pine South Group Camp group summer 2 2
Wolf Ford Horse Camp equestrian summer 2 2

1 Simple addition of n_days for each site type, not checking whether any of the max occupancy dates overlapped



Number of days facilities were at least 90% occupied
2013-2020 by site type
facility_name site_type season n_days n_days_all_site_types1
Warrior Creek tent summer 25 34
Warrior Creek tent off-season 6 34
Warrior Creek group summer 3 34
Jackrabbit Mountain tent summer 12 24
Jackrabbit Mountain rv summer 10 24
Jackrabbit Mountain rv off-season 2 24
Linville Falls Campground group summer 10 22
Linville Falls Campground group off-season 5 22
Linville Falls Campground tent summer 3 22
Linville Falls Campground rv off-season 2 22
Cove Creek Lower Group Camp group summer 21 21
Oregon Inlet Campground rv summer 12 21
Oregon Inlet Campground tent summer 7 21
Oregon Inlet Campground group summer 2 21
Bandits Roost group summer 17 20
Mount Pisgah Campground tent summer 13 20
Mount Pisgah Campground rv summer 5 20
Bandits Roost tent summer 2 20
Mount Pisgah Campground rv off-season 2 20
Lake Powhatan rv summer 13 19
Lake Powhatan tent summer 6 19
Briar Bottom Group Campground group summer 18 18
Fort Hamby Park tent summer 10 18
Fort Hamby Park group summer 8 18
Big Creek Group Camp group summer 17 17
Flanners Beach Campground tent summer 15 15
Smokemont Group Camp group summer 14 15
Standing Indian Campground tent summer 10 15
Standing Indian Campground group summer 3 15
Standing Indian Campground group off-season 2 15
Cataloochee Group Camp group summer 7 12
Smokemont Campground tent summer 7 12
Cataloochee Group Camp group off-season 5 12
Smokemont Campground rv summer 5 12
Kuykendall Group Camp group summer 10 10
Long Point Cabin Camp cabin off-season 10 10
Frisco Campground tent summer 7 10
Frisco Campground rv summer 3 10
Badin Lake Group Camp group off-season 7 7
Cove Creek Upper Group Camp group summer 7 7
Davidson River tent summer 7 7
Deep Creek Group Camp group summer 7 7
Cheoah Point Campground tent summer 5 7
Cheoah Point Campground tent off-season 2 7
North Mills River group summer 4 6
Doughton Park Campground group off-season 3 6
North Mills River tent summer 2 6
Balsam Lake Lodge cabin summer 5 5
Big Creek Campground tent summer 5 5
Oyster Point Campground tent summer 5 5
Rattler Ford Group Campground group summer 5 5
Wash Creek Horse Camp equestrian summer 5 5
Badin Lake Campground tent summer 4 5
Van Hook Glade tent summer 4 5
Julian Price Campground tent off-season 2 5
Julian Price Campground tent summer 2 5
White Pine South Group Camp group summer 4 4
Great Island Cabin Camp cabin off-season 2 4
Great Island Cabin Camp cabin summer 2 4
Black Mountain Campground tent summer 3 3
Cape Point Campground tent summer 3 3
Cataloochee Horse Camp equestrian summer 3 3
Rocky Bluff Campground tent summer 3 3
Arrowhead Campground tent summer 2 2
Canebrake Horse Camp equestrian off-season 2 2
Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area tent summer 2 2
Curtis Creek Campground tent summer 2 2
Ocracoke Campground tent summer 2 2
Wolf Ford Horse Camp equestrian summer 2 2

1 Simple addition of n_days for each site type, not checking whether any of the max occupancy dates overlapped



9 Appendix 2: USA

9.1 USA-level inventory

NC inventory on-boarding at recreation.gov seems generally consistent with the rest of the USA: 2008 was the first year that recreation.gov was able to offer reservations on nearly all of the existing camping facilities across the USA. So comparing later years with a 2009 baseline provides our best view of year-to-year increases in inventory in the parks. This includes some new or existing parks coming on-line as well, as seen above in the parks that have data only for very recent years.


Starting in 2009 each year saw a very small number of campgrounds adding newly reservable overnight site types. Again, these are for the whole USA.


It seems like normal growth in in 2009 and following years as facilities added additional types of sites and perhaps some new facilities opened. The overall compound annual growth rate3 between 2009 and 2020 was 2.6%, with some differences in the kinds of sites:


9.2 Summary by state


Public parks with overnight camping
with reservations at recreation.gov in 2020
facility_state n_parks Number of parks offering site type
tent cabin group rv equestrian shelter management other1
(not_specified) 106 75 8 13 13 1 2 4 3
AK 202 16 186 2 7
AL 19 19 1 1
AR 83 80 2 11 11 13 1
AZ 101 44 18 55 4 5 1 1
CA 460 303 33 164 25 20 1 28 5
CO 190 136 26 40 23 6 1 5
CT 1 1 1
FL 23 13 1 8 6 1 2
GA 34 32 1 8 5 1 7 1
HI 1 1
IA 21 20 6 1
ID 179 90 51 69 2 2 3 3 2
IL 20 17 5 1 1
IN 4 4 1 1 3
KS 35 33 18 1 2
KY 34 29 1 7 5 2 4 1
LA 1 1
MA 6 5 1
MD 15 9 1 8 1 1 1
ME 4 4 3 3
MI 87 57 3 19 3 2 2 2
MN 35 33 3 7 2 1 1 1
MO 53 49 1 21 2 1 7 1
MS 21 20 2 2 5
MT 187 50 111 34 7 1 5 2 1
NC 58 33 6 18 10 8 3 1
ND 13 10 1 2 1 1 1
NE 4 4 2 1
NH 16 11 3 2
NJ 1 1
NM 30 17 18 2 2 2 1
NV 16 12 6 7 1
NY 3 2 1 1
OH 5 4 2 1 1
OK 58 54 16 2 2 6 1
OR 306 192 57 69 14 17 3 7 4
PA 25 21 4 5 4 1 2 2 1
SC 12 9 3 4 1 1 1
SD 17 13 1 2 2 1
TN 40 33 13 9 2 8 1
TX 79 74 36 11 8 21 9
UT 200 123 20 130 23 7 1 9 3
VA 43 24 4 17 6 2 2 1
VT 5 5 1
WA 151 93 18 56 4 1 1 9
WI 31 28 1 7 1 1
WV 16 12 1 6 1
WY 76 41 23 18 3 1 1
Total 3,127 1,951 592 932 230 99 48 149 33

1 Other includes 'boat in', 'anchorage', 'mooring', 'zone' and a few others



9.3 Limitations in USA-level data

The USA-level data does not include all reservable camping sites, presumably because they use a different reservation system. For example:

  • Yellowstone Hotel and Cabins are not reservable via recreation.gov, but campgrounds and backcountry camping permits are
  • Yosemite Creek Campground is not reservable, but other Yosemite campgrounds are
  • No overnight facilities in Hawaii are reservable (are there any?)

In contrast: Great Smokey Mountain National Park campgrounds are all reservable.

Some recreation areas allow camping; only two in the data set are reservable; they are not included here.


10 Possible future work


  1. The Camping Crunch: Camping’s rise in popularity on America’s public lands was published Oct 21, 2021 on the website of the Center or Western Priorities at https://westernpriorities.org/the-camping-crunch/ . I found it through a reference in Jeremy Singer-Vines’ excellent newsletter Data is Plural↩︎

  2. I downloaded data set from https://ridb.recreation.gov/download on 2021-11-11, specifically (1) overview information in RIDB Recreation Data at https://ridb.recreation.gov/downloads/RIDBFullExport_V1_JSON.zip and (2) historical data for each year FY 2006 - FY 2020 as zipped CSV files, e.g, https://ridb.recreation.gov/downloads/reservations2020.zip for 2020↩︎

  3. Growth rate in the number of facilities offering the various types of overnight sites, each facility + site_type counted once each year.↩︎